Reluctantly I spent the day at the Vampire Council's headquarters in Dublin, having waved Eric goodbye at dawn when he left for our hotel suite. I kissed him deeply, and nuzzled his skin, rubbing my cheek against his. He had endured my family with admirable patience; a wave of affection came over me and I hugged him tight.
"Thank you," I said simply and he nodded, then turned and left. I would've preferred to spend the day in the king-sized bed beside him, but the Empress had extended me an invitation to spend the day before the ceremony as her guest – pretending I was a virginal bride, ready to be handed over to my vampire husband, I guess. In any case, if an Empress kindly suggests that you spend the day in her residence, you'd better fetch your things. And fast. So I slept in the lumpy bed in one of the draughty guestrooms and got up at sundown to meet my father in the Great Hall. The Ceremony was to take place at 3 a.m., the witching hour, but before then I had to be coached for my role.
The Vampire Council's headquarters were squashed into a Georgian mansion in the centre of Dublin. Flanked on either side by identical tall, grand buildings that housed actuary offices, insurance companies or financial firms, it didn't look particularly spectacular or palatial. However, it had been the seat of the European emperor since the early 1800s, built on the site of the previous residence which had dated back to the Middle Ages. Which, in turn, had replaced the previous building, one that had burned down in the Dark Ages. Do you see where I'm heading here? It was a point of vampire pride, particularly in view of all of the mega-mansions built by the American states' kings and queens, that the European headquarters were old – creaky, labyrinthine and stuffed to the gills with ancient paintings, handwoven carpets, mediaeval tapestries and thousands upon thousands of books. The European vampires were defiantly enthusiastic about the residence, blatantly lying when they said they were not inconvenienced by the lack of parking or the haphazard layout of the state rooms. The building was like a child's Lego house, added to by a succession of architects, seemingly intent on stacking rooms on top of each other, joined by random narrow corridors, up and down little stairs.
I was standing in the Great Hall, which – compared to Queen Catherine's enormous ballroom – was rather poky, with a dais at one end for the Empress' throne and standing room for only a couple of hundred vampires. But what it lacked in size, it made up for in opulence. The curtains draped around the throne had been a present from Louis XIV, who'd hung identical curtains in one of his state rooms in Versailles. The walls were hung with portraits of famous vampires that had long since met the True Death, and beside the throne, in a glass cabinet, was the missing piece of the Bayeux Tapestry, the one that showed William the Conqueror meeting Aodh the Red, the then vampire Emperor of the Western Isles. It smelled of beeswax and mothballs: the smell of my childhood. The smell of countless hours spent yawning at the back of the hall, listening to interminable vampire ceremonies.
Beside me, my father cleared his throat.
"So, you know the drill, then?" he said.
He had retired as personal secretary when Emperor Charles had died, now he only presided as Master of Ceremonies for more important vampire events. Our Ceremony of Symbiosis included, it seemed.
"Yes," I said – I'd seen enough of them growing up – "You make a cut on my wrist and a cut on his, we smear our bloods together, our wrists are bound with a grey cloth, you say some Latin hocus-pocus, then we're untied and he licks my wrist clean and I lick his." I shuddered. "Disgusting. You know, in America you just go to city hall and sign a form."
"Well, this is not America," he said. "Would you rather we still had the Roman ceremony?"
I shuddered again. In the old days – the good old days, the vampires said wistfully – a human/vampire Ceremony of Symbiosis concluded with sex, public sex, in front of the audience, who generally joined in. The Old Emperor had done away with that. Officially, at least.
"No, no, it's fine," I said, "At least it'll be over quickly."
"The whole thing is very quick," he said. "You've only been here a couple of days."
"I think Eric is afraid I'll have second thoughts and bolt," I said, laughing. A dry laugh.
"You're not planning to, are you?" he asked anxiously.
"No. I'm good with it. This is what I want."
I said it firmly. Just in case someone needed to be convinced.
Like me, for example.
My father took my reply at face value and looked down at his little notebook, where he'd written a list of things to do.
"Does he have his witness?"
"Check," I said. Some Swedish vampire was flying in from Stockholm to stand as his best man.
"And you have your witness," he said. "Check."
The Empress was mine; it was a gigantic endorsement and Eric had been almost giddy with excitement when she'd declared she would stand for me. In terms of useful connections, he had catapulted past all of his American peers.
"Knife for the bloodletting?"
"Check."
Eric had packed the dagger I had found the first evening I'd been in his house. I guessed it wasn't the first time it had been used for this purpose.
"You've got your outfit and he has his?"
"Check."
Traditionally, the human wears white and the vampire black. I'd taken Pam off into New Orleans to find me a dress and we'd argued and bickered our way around three designer boutiques before I found a cream linen shift dress by Givenchy. It was almost startlingly simple: a beautifully tailored ankle-length robe, whose sleeves were covered in delicate cream embroidery. Even Pam, who had wanted something that revealed far more skin, begrudgingly admitted that it was very elegant. She'd insisted on buying for me as a gift, laughing gaily at its $4000 price tag.
"I have to stay here and keep this place running," she'd said, "So this is my way of being part of the ceremony."
My father glanced up.
"It's a white frock, I hope," he said. "It has to be white."
"Technically it's not. It's cream, which is much the same thing."
"Cream is not white," he said slowly.
"But it's pretty much white," I said. "I mean, Eric is technically not wearing black either, it's more of anthracite. Or maybe charcoal, I'm not quite sure."
"For the love of God and all things holy, Magdalena," he cried in despair, "what part of black and white did you two eejits not understand? White is white, not cream, not ivory, not buttermilk or whatever else you want to call it. And Northman needs to be wearing black. Black!"
"Does it really matter, Da?" I said. "It's just a private ceremony."
"Of course it matters!" he exclaimed. "And it's not just a private ceremony. Nothing in this fecking place is private!"
And to illustrate his point, he shouted, "Aidan!" and the door of the room opened instantly; the young guard who'd been waiting outside popped his head in.
"Tell Silvia we have a ... what do you call it? A wardrobe crisis. Tell her we need white frocks, pronto."
My father turned to me and pointed at the door.
"Get yourself up those stairs and find a white dress. I don't care what kind of newfangled notions them American vampires have, over here we do white and black bound by grey. That's the way it is. You should know better, Maggie," he muttered, shaking his head.
Thoroughly reproached, I headed up the stairs to wait for Silvia, the Empress' human lady-in-waiting and the keeper of the wardrobe.
x x x
Silvia – a small, thin woman with a strong Dublin accent and a needle permanently threaded through the lapel of her jacket – arrived with another woman in tow, carrying an armful of garment bags. They made me put on my linen dress, then stood around me tsk-tsking and shaking their heads.
"It's not white, pet," Silvia said. In her accent, the final 't's were almost silent: it's noh whigh, peh.
"I thought it would do," I said, starting to feel myself break out into a sweat with stress. "It's Givenchy, it cost a fortune. Eric's progeny said it would do."
"It's not white," she repeated. "It has to be white, like: snow white. Jill, give me the Victorian one."
Jill handed over a voluminous white satin dress and I was ordered to strip to my underwear so it could be dropped gently over my head.
Silvia tsk-tsked again. "Your boobs are too big," she said accusingly. "We won't get that closed."
"Sorry," I muttered.
I was squeezed into another dress which they also couldn't close and swamped in an enormous robe that had been made for someone far more statuesque than I. Just as I was beginning to despair, Silvia unzipped a garment bag and pulled out a froth of lace. I hated it on sight.
"I don't think – " I began as the dress was lowered.
"Wait a moment," Silvia said, pulling it into place. I gasped as she pulled on the ribbons at the back and it enclosed my ribs like a vice, the boning in the corset poking my soft skin.
"Lovely," she said. "That's Chantilly lace, you know."
The dress had a high neck and sleeves so long they covered my hands. The corset of the dress was covered in intricate lace, which ran over the bodice and fell in vast folds around my feet. When I looked behind I saw a train of white lace pooled all over the floor like a melted snowman. I sighed. I looked like I'd been attacked by a table cloth – and the table cloth had won. It was the exact opposite of what I'd wanted to wear.
My face must have said it all, because Silvia patted my arm sympathetically.
"It's only for twenty minutes, pet," she said. "Then you can take it off. But at this point, we don't have time to do major alterations. I'm just glad to find one that fits. Once the ceremony is over, you can put on your nice new dress, okay?"
And she peered into my face to make sure I wouldn't cry, the way you would with a disappointed child.
I nodded and bit my lip.
Jill, who had left the room to take a phone call, returned and said something in a low tone. Silvia's face brightened.
"Apparently your man has a black suit with him, so he's good to go. The Empress will be up to see you in a little while – she's sending up one of her lads with a couple of head coverings for you in the meantime. You should have something to cover that hair, vampires believe red hair brings bad luck."
I snorted.
The two women tugged at the dress, stitching the train back on more firmly. I looked at myself glumly in the mirror. Eric would fall about the place laughing when he saw me. I turned away from the mirror and stared out the window, trying not to think about the grin that would cross his face when I stood by his side in my borrowed wedding dress.
There was a knock at the door.
"Come in," Silvia said, a needle clenched between her lips. She paused for a second or two and called, "Well, well, well! Look at what the cat's dragged in! Long time, no see. Where have you been hiding, you rascal?"
"I've been working," a male voice said. "Travelling. Revelling. Carousing. Gallivanting. The usual stuff."
And his playful laugh filled the room.
I froze. The room filled with the scent of woodland, of sunlight.
"Is this the bride-to-be?" he said. "Lucky Northman."
"Give me that," Silvia said and I heard a rustle of fabric. The bed – my bed – creaked. "Haven't you got anywhere better to be, Raphael?"
"Nah," he said. "The Empress is running me ragged with stupid errands. I just popped in to tell her I was back in the country and she immediately made me go down into the vault to pick up a bunch of veils. What do I know about veils? No," he finished. "This is exactly where I want to be."
His voice had a teasing note, an intimacy.
With my heart in my mouth, I turned slowly, causing Silvia to squawk as she tried to sew a bit of torn lace at my hip.
Stretched across the bed, his head propped cheekily on his elbow, was the dark vampire.
Hræfn.
He winked at me, his tongue flickering to his upper lip, an insolent grin spreading across his face.
Silvia stood up and draped a veil over my head, pulling it down to cover my face, while Jill adjusted it, sticking pins in my hair. Through my lace prison I saw the vampire lazily pull at his t-shirt to reveal the skin of his lower stomach. Still watching me, he scratched his skin, his long fingers moving slowly. Sound filled my head, the whooshing sound you hear when you put a seashell to your ears, and my blood started thump-thump-thumping, an irregular pattern, out of kilter. His smell, the smell of forest and green leaves, rose in my nose and I pulled at the veil, trying to get it off, trying to breathe.
"Jesus Christ," Silvia cried, "she's gone as white as a ghost!"
I bent over, gasping as my ribs were cut into by the corset, watching the floor rise to meet me.
Quick as a flash, the vampire lifted me onto the bed, rolling me on my side so Silvia could loosen the stays. I dug my fingers into the mattress as the room swirled, trying to suppress my nausea.
"Get her a glass of water," Hræfn said. "I'll stay with her."
Silvia scurried out of the room.
"Maybe a wet cloth for her forehead?" he said to Jill and she nodded, leaving us alone.
"What are you doing here?" I whispered.
"I live here," he answered. "So: did you miss me, sweetheart? Why did you leave me without saying goodbye?"
I slid off the bed, caught up in yards of lace, like a fish in a net.
"Get out of here, now," I hissed. "I swear to God, you'll meet the True Death tonight if you don't get out of here this instant."
"You must feel something for me," he said. "Or else you'd be screaming the place down."
Instantly, I opened my mouth but he clamped a hand over it.
"Okay, I get it," he said. "We clearly need to reconnect. No worries, babe."
He grabbed the train of the dress and ripped it, undoing Silvia's painstaking work. I gasped and he tried to use the opportunity to shove a bunch of fabric in my mouth. At least, he tried: I pummelled him, scratching and pushing him off, but he grabbed both my wrists in his, wrapping them tightly in a strip of lace, then whirled me around and gagged me. We were in the middle of this inelegant tussle when the door opened again, Silvia and Jill appeared transfixed on the threshold. He pushed me on to the bed, where I floundered underneath yards of fabric and watched as he grabbed the two women and yanked them into the room. Jill started shrieking; he grabbed her head and twisted her neck with a sickening crack. She crumpled to the floor. Silvia looked at me horror-struck; I'm sure my face looked much the same.
"Raphael," Silvia said, raising her hands, "don't do this, Raphael."
"I won't kill you," he said, "I've always liked you, Sil."
"You had to work so hard to earn the Empress's forgiveness," she wheedled, "please don't do anything stupid. You don't want to be exiled again."
"Ah, you know what? I've decided I don't like Dublin that much any more," he said pensively. "It's gotten too expensive. Too much pollution. Irish people don't taste as good any more. Except this one."
He pulled me up off the bed and kissed my hair. I elbowed him sharply but it only made him laugh.
"She belongs to the King of Louisiana," Silvia said warningly. "You'd best not harm her."
"I'm not going to harm her," he said scornfully. "I'm going to rescue her."
I tried to protest through my gag, pounding him with my bound hands but he just pushed me back on to the bed.
"Hand over your mobile and hop into that wardrobe like a good woman," he said to Silvia in a casual tone. "Or else I'll wring your neck like your assistant's."
Silvia made a sound like a sob, dug in her pocket and handed over her mobile phone. Looking at me fearfully, she climbed into the heavy antique wardrobe and Hræfn closed the doors, turning the key in the lock. He heaved the armoire in front of it, winking at me as he did so.
"There," he said in satisfaction. "Are you ready to leave, my darling?"
No, no, no, I tried to say.
"Do you want to walk or shall I carry you?"
I dug in my heels defiantly, so he grabbed me and slung me over his shoulder like a fireman. Then smacked my lace-clad bottom appreciatively – not like a fireman.
"So nice of you to wear a wedding dress for me," he said. "Sorry I had to rip it, but what ho. I'll be ripping much more of it before long, eh?"
And with a hearty laugh he pushed open the door of the room and peeked out into the corridor.
"Hold tight," he said and took off down the carpeted hall at a run.